TALKING
business
‘‘
CrowdStrike, a leader in clouddelivered
endpoint protection, has
announced the release of the 2020
CrowdStrike Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ)
State of Cybersecurity Report produced by
independent research firm StollzNow.
Commissioned by CrowdStrike, the study
surveyed 2,017 business leaders in Australia,
New Zealand, India, Singapore, Philippines,
Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong
and Japan. The study found that among
those respondents who believe there should
be more investment in remote working, the
highest number (74%) list enhancement
of cybersecurity measures as a priority for
additional investment. Further, despite
a grim economic outlook, 65% expect
technology budgets to increase.
The report indicates that many
organizations have experienced Digital
Transformation at an unprecedented pace
and scale across business segments and
operations, as they have quickly moved to
mass remote working arrangements during
COVID-19 in order to survive.
In fact, 44% of business leaders surveyed said
the pandemic accelerated their move to cloud
solutions, while 82% say COVID-19 changed
the way they interact or deliver products and
services to customers. These results indicate
a strong shift and rapid investment into
transformation projects that move from onpremises
security solutions to next generation
cloud-native solutions as organizations look to
protect today’s distributed workforce.
As cybersecurity is front of mind for
budget allocation, many respondents have
recognized that COVID-19 has brought on
a massive increase in cyberthreat behavior.
In fact, CrowdStrike observed an increase in
eCrime activity up over 330% since the start
of the year compared to 2019.
As business leaders look forward and put
the initial shock of the pandemic behind
them, the issues of solidifying a secure
Digital Transformation, prioritizing and
assigning budgets to appropriate and
most critical areas, including cybersecurity
training and protecting new supply chains
will need to be addressed.
“The COVID-19 pandemic may have had
the biggest impact on the way organizations
operate since the introduction of office PCs.
The reaction of business leaders has been
impressive, but the speed and size of change
to a remote workforce led to some inevitable
gaps, particularly in the cybersecurity of
organizations,” said Andrew Littleproud, Vice
President, APJ at CrowdStrike.
“Our findings show that respondents
understand these gaps and expect to
address them in the recovery, going beyond
‘good enough’ security measures to ensure
their employees remain secure against
sophisticated threat activity regardless
of where they are located. In the new
business normal, it will be vital to implement
solutions that can be quickly deployed at
scale to detect new threats, adhere to new
regulations and leverage the cloud so they
can be easily managed remotely.”
Other notable findings from the 2020
CrowdStrike APJ State of Cybersecurity
Report include:
• Though organizations have changed
their IT environments to accommodate
remote workers, 39% of respondents
have not changed their security programs
as a result of COVID-19, potentially
exposing their organizations to cyber-risks
from new and more sophisticated attacks.
“
ALONG WITH
THE MORE
TRADITIONAL
OBJECTIVES OF
ESPIONAGE AND
SURVEILLANCE
HAVE BEEN ADDED
NEW TASKS,
SUCH AS SOWING
WIDESPREAD
DISRUPTION AND
DISCORD.
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